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Power Word: Replicate Additional Information

Power Word: Replicate Card Review

This card looks pretty bad, to be honest. I’ll just compare it to a few similar cards to show you my reasoning. First card is Vivid Nightmare. One of the reasons to copy a minion is to run some sort of combo. But, Priest already has a cheaper way to copy minions. 1 health doesn’t matter if you kill your opponent anyway, because you’re playing a combo deck. And 2 mana cheaper means that you can actually pull off some crazy stuff, unlike with this one. Another card isShadow Essence. This one costs one more mana, but has a few clear advantages. First one is that you don’t need a minion on the board to copy, so you can play it on the empty board. Another one is that actually copying a minion from your deck means that once it dies, you can revive him easily, so you can use it to pull expensive minions. This one is almost impossible to combo with some expensive, big minions, because they will just die. And finally, Faceless Manipulator. If you end up sticking a solid minion on the board, then Faceless Manipulator is just a better option – and you can also copy your opponent’s minions.

The only real advantage, and I guess the main use of this card, is to run it in a deck with lot of small minions with Deathrattles. For example, Devilsaur Egg – this is a card that you would absolutely want to copy with this one, because it would be a 5 mana 5/5 that Deathrattles into another 5/5 – great. Even 5 mana 5/5 with “Deathrattle: Draw a card, Spell Damage +1” (Bloodmage Thalnos) would be very good. So if I had to make a guess, if anything, this card would see play in this kind of Midrange / Tempo Deathrattle Priest thing.

It’s not a really bad card, since it can be pretty consistent in a deck with lots of sticky Deathrattles, but it’s not very exciting either.

67 Comments

dumbEndumber

July 29, 2018 at 3:29 am

So this. Obviously the 1/1 copies or Vivid nightmare are sufficient for effect duplication, and Faceless is more flexible otherwise. So what cards would benefit from being a 5/5? DR cards you want on small health. Big cards like the Lich King, or Ysera, or whatnot, are just better off copied with a faceless. So, what are the prime targets for this spell (for 5 mana nontheless?)

Enrage cards with otherwise bad statlines are one I guess? So this is good on amani berserker (not the biggest value imho), worgen (if you smite it next turn, it deals 12 damage! with only 3 cards!). The highest value target would be (and I am absolutely serious about this) Angry Chicken. Which of course is unplayable otherwise, even in priest. Plus enrage has negative synergy with heals. So what else?

Classic cards that tend to take damage/ like taking damage? A second imp master for a token priest? Doubtful. A 5/5 acolyte of pain for 5 mana, when you have another down, just so you can draw more cards in a control-oriented deck? Lacks sufficient value. Zerek himself? Too slow, too vulnerable to poly effects. you cannot even play it in a turn without cost reduction/coin! There is also meat wagon, but that card is not that great otherwise either. Maybe in CubePriest?

So, umm, cards with okay effects but bad statlines? Double lightwell for 7 with one being 5/5? You could inner fire the other for +1 mana, and get two 5/5 for 8 mana and three cards that heal for 6 at random per turn! You could make Booty Bay bodyguard have a 1 more health copy, as opposed to the vanilla 5/4 when you play it another time! You can copy a nerubian unraveler for just 1 more mana! Play a cobalt scalemane! Include it in your TogWaggle deck with counterspell, so that the enemy has to use it! Make a Wax elemental 5/5! Use it on scalehide for 5 heal! The possibilities are endless!

Now that my sarcastic rant is out of the way, this card is pure garbage, almost a pure downgrade from vivid nightmare/faceless. What a disappointing joke, blizzard.

Are you guys talking seriously about playing a Zerek deck? A 5/5 minion which needs constant spells on him to work properly?
What is Priest getting from Zerek that a Druid, Paladin, Rogue, Lock, Mage or Shaman can’t?
Man, odd Pala and Rogue can even get bigger boards in turn 5…
This spell is just bad. I can’t think about a minion you would want to copy for 5 mana.
4 mana res Velen, 5 mana copy It… Then what? You have to play 2 radiant + 2 mind blast to do 40dmg. 6 card combo having to res Velen to do 40 dmg, assuming the BEST possible scenario this card is no good, and doesnt change the crappy style the Priest is condemned to play these days.
In my opinion, Priest is getting a lot of crap this expansion… I mean, like much more than usual.

Priest always finds a way to be decent, doesn’t mean blizzard isn’t making it increasingly difficult for priest players. Priest only got 1 card this expansion that has great value: Reckless experimenter. Look at all the other value cards other decks got. The 2 things priest were supposed to be specializing in this expansion. (Deathrattle and duplicating minions) other classes got much better cards top do it with.

P.s. purify was at least a common card and could see some play this is a fricken epic. Id say this one is much more disappointing

Can anyone explain why would you ever run this over Faceless Manipulator? Like Faceless can even target enemy minions, ffs! Is there a minion with low stats that would be busted with 5/5 stats? Please don’t say Angry Chicken… 0.5/5 stars. RIP Priest so far in Boomsday.

Zerek is one of the only reasons. Of course it making the minion a 5/5 is more flexible so you can target bloodmage with it or other deathrattles and it becomes a lot more valuable. I agree with you it feels like post KFT they’ve had direction and idea of where to take priest with certain archetypes (except witchwood.) but they just don’t follow through on execution and make the cards not good enough. The 2/1 DR mech is pretty good the epic holds interesting possibilities but there’s something missing for a cohesive deck.

If Zerek is one of the main reasons… You can’t even combo this out on the same turn! Yeah the experimenter and the modified Loot Hoarder are nice, but nowhere near the power level of what other classes are getting. They better get another AOE, because right now you pretty much need Duskbreaker and a dragon package to have something viable.

it comboes with Zerek if you get it from twilight call for a total of 8 mana after he died at turn 6. But you need tons of effort to survive that long. And the fact that the priest good board clear is a dragon synergy or the old circle auchenai. and the fact that you probably cant use the beetles or other deathrattles by that moment makes it kinda bad. Its overall preety bad and its been bad for so long that it gets frustrating. I think this is the main reason they are boosting archbishop. Since they have nothing else good for priest. So you will probably still run the Quest psychic scream meme deck. But this time you will have a chance to win againts kingsbane rogue.

Yeah really sad. I can’t run Quest Priest because I’m missing the Quest and Benedictus, and either way I probably wouldn’t want to play it often, the games just take forever. I really wish they printed some support for Lady in White. I have the card and I believe it has a lot of potential. But right now she doesn’t fit in any deck, and cards so far aren’t bringing any hope. 🙁

Gingeraffe

July 28, 2018 at 4:29 pm

Trust me as a golden priest main with 700 ranked wins who has played since Naxx I know how disappointing this is.

Obviously zerek works i na Big deathrattle deck. Where you don;t have any early game deathrattles other than maybe one for card draw. Than you can twilights call and vivid nightmare ot this piece of crap. And than start multiplying zereks. Since If he is your only Deathrattle you will always get him from twilight call. And you can shadow visions for him. The bad thing is that if zerek was 5 mana and the mech that fetches him was 3 or . It would have been the best Baku quest priest out there. It was close but oh well. Be prepared with tons of silences and double mass dispels

the decks true weakness is polumorph effects. And chaining big board requires too much resourses. Reckless experienters can play around the polimorphs but its still a very expensive card and as i mentioned priest lacks good one and 2 drops. As a 3 drop you can have acolyte of agony and the ungoro mushroom. Although understated and hardt to win you the board they ar still not that bad.

Well considering all the crap priest got this expansion. This is the best card he got. And its not the best crap its actually somewhat usable. Is it worth the the epic slot. Probably not. And if it was suposed to combo with the legendary at least moving their legendary to 5 mana. I know it will be a instant pick since priest kinda lacks any play at 5 mana. Priest lacks a good play on 1 and 2 and 3 but thats is a different story :D.
Still poorly designed but not as bad. it can help you chain some Zereks if you can make them multiply. But as dragoncaller alana tought us few expansions ago. a board full of 5/5 is very easy to get cleared with the mana it requires to function. and still a mass dispell with any descent board wipe is enough.
If zerek was not a piece of garbage this card m8 have been OK.

Oh and one mor ething don;t try to compare this to faceless. Faceless is much more usable. Although it will screw your legendary spell setup double faceless would be much better than anything this expansion has to offer for priest.

Seems really bad. Vivid n. is better for combo. With zerek its useless since the combo is 11 mana. Maybe with eggs in some setup, to boost their attack? Dissapointing for an epic I guess. But who knows how the meta will change 🙂

I am pretty sure Paladin is supposed to be optics and science revolving around light in general, while Shaman is electricity. Warrior is mechanics, while Hunter is more about explosives. The only one I am not entirely sure what it represents is Warlock.

The best combo I see is with Twilight’s call. Would fit into a quest priest but the question would be what deathrattle is good enough to make a 5 mana 5/5 with this deathrattle worth a 8 mana combo and I can’t really think about anything yet.

There are some applications for this card, especially if a Copy, Cube/Deathrattle Priest every really comes around as copies three and four of Faseless Manipulator. It can also give you a second copy of Zerek while also allowing the first one to re-summon itself.

Granted, I doubt a Cube/Deathrattle Priest would really want to play more than two copies of Faceless Manipulator though. Even in Cube Warlock, I found multiple Faceless Manipulators outside of the mirror and control match-up were rather cumbersome.

Even with all that, I would at least keep one copy of the card if you pull one from a pack just in case something come around.

I can’t see a main reason to play this card at all; faceless manipulator is more flexible and often yields better stats. Plus this card has below pit fighter stats and isn’t useful to the deathrattle priest, shadowreaper, or inner fire priest decks.

I’m pretty sure this is good in otk valen malygos priest because it can get discounted by radiant elemental. I’m just not sure what the exact combo will be because you need 2 radiants, the spellstone, this card, and then some free mind blasts.

Yes such flexibility would make the card better, but Team 5 has been wording cards as they have recently to prevent really rather infuriating combos if pulled off. While I can’t think of anything that would be a bad beat story from this card being used against you if it could target enemy minions, the potential for such a thing happening within a community that has made it vocal that they don’t like dumb luck stealing games is probably best prevented.

I also do not thing a class getting a few bad cards when that class has been the one of the single best classes in the game as Priest was from the release of Knights of the Frozen Throne to the Patches and Raza Nerfs. Even then archetype such as Big Priest only died because many of the good control tools Priest had from Mean Streets of Gagetzahn and Barnes had rotated out.

im sure blizard doing this on purpose they want ruin priest to dust for the other classes.
mage has 4 mana copy a minion this is 5 mana.and epic and beside those trash legendary priest didnt get even a single good card this expansion all trash every expansion is more trash than last.

Are you not remembering the period of time Priest was probably the best class to play for at least six months? Every class does get it’s time in the sun and most, if not all, of the Year of the Mammoth was that time for priest.
Sure between the support of The Witchwood and this next expansion, it is a fairly disappointing time to be a Priest player, but I do think the tools, especially the deathrattle related ones, are going to work themselves into a critical mass by the time the expansion after Boomsday is released.

They’re giving priest the shaman treatment; raza control shadowreaper priest was absolutely not fun to play against. Now that shadowreaper decks are much worse, they want to keep the class relatively low power so the deck doesn’t somehow rise back up to being OP and infuriating to play against.

I can see the potential for a quest-spell hybrid priest. There are a lot of tools to run a few GOOD deathrattle minions with the meat of the deck having Lyra and spell generations for your spellstones. This is just another tool that fits that mold. Can’t wait for Priest to prove everyone hating on it wrong.

Tldr- loser wines about how priest was supposed to be cloning science but other classes got way better cloning cards.

Anything this card does can be done better by other cards. Got a big taunt you want a copy of. Run faceless. Same price you get all the stats. Got a minion with a great effect you want two of, use vivid nightmare, hell combo it with Devine hymn same man cost for better spell and a heal to your face. Priest wasn’t even in that good of a spot at the moment yet they got the worst class cards this set while Rogue and druid and warlock get better “cloning cards” than the class that’s supposed to specialize in cloning (Sorry priest is my favorite class and so far only one card has not been a disappointment. Reckless expirementor, I’d put money that is the only priest card from this set that sees play.)

I mean, for my taste, it feel kinda empty, because the colours used are basically Green and mostly grey, the background makes me sad, the shadow is pretty basic, almost non-existent, like 80% of the art is symmetrical, i have no problem with symmetry, in fact i feel comfortable with it, but i think, it feels like the designer leave it unfinished. but w/e, im ok with it.

I think the art will be good in the new meta
I mean,its a damn beautyfull yellow circle he is summoning in his hands
But i get decepcioned a little cause it dont make sense cause its more about magic,and this expansion theme is about science,so would clearly better If the character hold something that medics uses on their surgeons for example
3/5 star card